A Non-Stop Whirligig of Mama

Have you ever seen a plate-spinner show at a carnival or county fair? The kind with a poor schmuck who carefully balances some plates atop some sticks, gives the plates a spin and then spends the rest of the time running madly back and forth, trying to keep all those plates aloft without them crashing to the ground. Inevitably, he’s gasping for air, struggling mightily back and forth to give wobbling plates another spin, and practically passing out from exhaustion by the time the final plate’s shattered on the ground.

Welcome to my life this past week…month… 😀

For the past six weeks, I’ve been prepping one of my twins (the homeschooled one) for a placement test (this past week) to get her back into public school. She finally aged out of the *cough* horrible *cough* elementary school in our district and can move up to the next level of school where it seems the administrative staff actually have functioning human souls.

If they hadn’t been so darn nice when I attended orientation night for my other twin, I wouldn’t have even considered it as a possibility. But they were VERY nice and willing to work with us on transitioning her back to public school. The only snag was that since I’d been focusing on going the homeschooling route, we’d used a Waldorf School-based accredited curriculum, which was dandy, however it was not Common Core (ugh – shudder). So in the six weeks before her placement test, we had to cram a bunch of common crap…er…core. Khan Academy was a great help, but not quite enough.

She really loathed the process and I wasn’t a big fan myself. But by the end of it, we think she probably did pretty well on the test…for the parts of it she wasn’t horrifically bored by.

You’re probably wondering why the heck we’re even considering putting her back in public school since we obviously are cognizant of common crap’s…er…core’s epic failings. It’s because I do much better at being “Mama” than “teacher”. I’ve got a kid that LOVES art, creative writing, poetry, science, and absolutely loathes and detests common core math (although if she bothers to pay attention to it she’s actually rather good at it) and she could give a rat’s patootie for anything else that’s non-fine-arts or science. This does not make for a comfortable educational experience.

But her twin’s getting all kinds of assemblies and class parties and access to clubs that she’s been left out of (with the exception of a one-day Shakespeare for kids event that I harassed the organizing teacher into letting her participate in, as public school folks usually tend to treat homeschooled children as though they are on par with roaches.), and while she’s had ample socialization (YES HOMESCHOOLERS HAVE ACCESS TO SOCIALIZATION!!!) most of the neighborhood kids have school experiences in common that she’s been left out of (due to the school’s own epic failures at curbing bullying which necessitated our switching her to homeschool this year, though I give massive kudos to her twin’s teacher who made great efforts to deal with bullying that threatened her students).

And while I’ve been homeschooling my child, I haven’t been able to do a thing with my own writing and art. I don’t regret basically putting my life on hold for a year, my child’s worth it, but I need some me-time, just out of self-preservation. 😀

Then, while we’ve been prepping, my best friend came for a visit about a week ago and a few other things popped up since then that had me running from plate to plate, trying to keep everything in the air.

Also last week, I went to a totally AWESOME 2-day blogger convention and toy expo called Blogger Bash / Sweet Suite, and I’ve been getting my WishStones business off the ground and I’ve got a limited window of opportunity to produce enough WishStones to last me the entire year before the weather turns too cold and wet to make those outside (can’t do it inside, not enough ventilation).

And then there’s the missing 7 or so chapters of the book I’m writing that I wanted to have a 1st draft ready by end of August so I could pitch it to any publishers/agents at a sci-fi convention I’m planning on going to.

And all the follow up with brand reps I met at the Blogger Bash convention.

And general mommy-ing all the while.

Ya know, it’s pretty rude to roll around the floor, laughing your butt off at me, like that. 😀 I totally could have really managed all of that…really. In some alternate universe where I had a time-machine, and a cooperative ‘me’ from another dimension willing and able to help me out…and if I sprouted six more arms and legs…and maybe hired a couple people…